


Where We Would Be Without You

by anistarrose



Series: Forduary 2019 [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Forduary, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-12 00:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18000302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: Ford reminisces on his mistakes, and Mabel is haunted at night by the choices she nearly made.





	Where We Would Be Without You

**Author's Note:**

> An only slightly late entry for Forduary Week 4: Love(/together/family/connection)!

The Shack is quiet tonight, and Ford can’t sleep.

He’s sitting in the living room, just as he has the last few evenings while helping Stan remember — but tonight, Stan is up in his own room, and Ford is alone. Before Weirdmageddon, Ford had usually slept in Soos’s break room, but he’d never liked it — too many memories of prisms and journals and possession were corrupting the place, would bleed into his nightmares and practically do Bill’s work for him.

But no demons — or at least, no literal ones — lurk at the edges of his dreams tonight, nor will they ever again. From outside, he can hear wolves howling and owls hooting, and from the wall across from where he now rests, he can hear the owl-shaped clock ticking… yet the world is eerily _silent_ in a way that Ford hasn’t felt in decades. 

There’s nothing haunting this night except himself, his undistracted mind, and his mistakes — and there are an awful lot of those, aren’t there?

_My fault that we ruined the Zodiac. My fault for not dismantling the portal at the first chance I had. My fault that I trusted Bill in the first place. My fault for leaving Stan behind._

From his coat’s inside pocket, he pulls out a faded photograph of two boys standing on a small and battered sailboat. It’s ripped and folded at the edges, but despite everything, still familiar.

He can think of no better way to make it up to Stan — no, not just make it up to Stan; he can think of no way he’d rather spend the remaining years of his life — but he would hardly be able to fault Stan for not giving him a second chance. He’s not sure if he would even give _himself_ a second chance.

_Why would Stan want to do_ anything _with the person who ruined his entire life, the person who very nearly brought ruin down upon the world as a whole?_

He slips the picture back into his pocket, and lets his head fall back until he’s staring at the ceiling, counting the planks. It’s not as effective of a distraction as he’d hoped.

It’ll be best just not to mention his plans to Stanley. No need to dredge up any more bitter old arguments, or long-deferred dreams, than the two of them already have this past month. The level of reconciliation they’ve reached, this cooperation as the family works to restore Stan’s memories and rebuild the Shack, is probably already pushing the limits of what Ford deserves — no need to try and force it along further, to risk destroying the progress they’ve made… 

Above Ford, the silence is broken by the faint creak of a door, and by the soft and repetitive rhythm of unsure footsteps descending down the stairs.

Ford jumps up from his chair. His first instinct is that it’s Stan, having another amnesiac relapse like he so often does late at night and now wandering around, lost and confused — but the gait is different from Stan’s, he realizes, the footsteps too light. 

“Mabel?” he calls out, and she turns around just as she’s about to enter the kitchen. “Is everything okay?”

She rushes to his side and buries her face in his coat, small arms wrapping around him and holding him surprisingly tight. With his unrestrained arm, Ford places a hand on her back and pats her gently, smoothing out her long and tangled hair.

“There, there. Shh, it’s alright…”

Her sniffles grow softer, and her grip on him relaxes. 

“Th-thank you, Grunkle Ford,” she chokes out.

They’re both silent for a moment as Mabel collects herself, until Ford finally feels like it’s the right time to start with a simple, one-word question.

“Nightmare?”

Mabel nods. “Mm-hm.”

“Will it help to go look at the statue? To see that Bill’s dead?”

“It wasn’t about Bill,” Mabel tells him, softly yet bluntly, and Ford is at a loss for words for a moment.

“Then what _was_ it — no, I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just…”

“No, it’s — it’s okay,” Mabel tells him. “Talking usually helps — doesn’t it?”

“If you think it does, then I’m here to listen.”

Mabel takes a deep and shaky breath.

“I dreamed… I dreamed that I pressed the red button.”

For a moment, Ford is clueless, having no idea what button she means… but then, he remembers the portal’s shutdown switch. He remembers how Dipper and Mabel hadn’t known of his existence until the very moment he’d returned, how the federal agents had been accusing Stan of wielding a doomsday device.

And he can imagine a world where the portal had never been reactivated, where he’d never been whisked out of the Nightmare Realm — he’s _already_ imagined it, spent so much time dwelling on the possibility ever since that fateful day.

“Stan was crying, in the dream,” Mabel went on, staring down at her feet like she was ashamed of what her dreamscape self had done. “He tried so hard to turn it back on again, he tried so hard to _get you back_ , but I don’t know if it was out of fuel, or — or —”

“Oh, Mabel…” 

“And I — but _I_ … that was almost what happened in _real life_ , Grunkle Ford! I was the only one who was able to reach the button, who was able to choose, and — I almost didn’t trust Stan! I almost _left you in the portal_!”

She’s crying again now, holding onto Ford’s coat like she’s afraid he’ll drift back into the electric blue void if she lets go. “What would we have done without you? How would summer have ended without you?”

Ford is dangerously close to blurting out _without the apocalypse, for one thing,_ but Mabel wipes away her tears and keeps talking before he can.

“This whole summer, I never saw Stan as happy as after Weirdmageddon once he started remembering and all. And I almost took that away from him! I almost took away the games you play with Dipper, and the sweaters we knit together, and — and that fight we all had with the water guns yesterday, and the hikes in the woods you took us on — and neither of us would’ve ever known what we missed! I almost took away your whole _family_ from you, Grunkle Ford, and I’m so, _so_ —”

“But you didn’t.” Ford kneels down next to her and pulls her into a hug, and feels her cautiously embrace him back. “And I don’t think you _ever_ would have, when it came down to it — I don’t think there’s a single alternate reality where that happened or will happen, and trust me, I’ve seen a lot of alternate realities. That’s the thing about dreams — sometimes, they can be a lot like Bill was. They can be ugly, manipulating _liars_.”

“You really think so?” Mabel asks. “You really think that in the whole universe, I’d never…”

“I do. You know who your family is, and you love them too much to ever truly distrust them like that — if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be Mabel. And I’m… I’m so _proud_ of you for that.”

For the first time that night, Mabel _smiles_ — and Ford does too.

“Thank you, Grunkle Ford,” she tells him.

“No, thank _you_ , Mabel,” Ford whispers back. “For being the type of person who would always, _always_ bring me back.”

_And for telling me,_ he thinks, _how much you all care about me when I’m too dense to see it myself._

***

Stan is heading to the kitchen for a glass of milk when he hears snoring so loud it couldn’t possibly be coming from just one person — and sure enough, Ford and Mabel are both fast asleep in his chair. Mabel is curled up as she hugs Ford’s left arm much like one might hug a stuffed animal, and Ford’s head is hanging off to one side, glasses slowly sliding off his nose and threatening to fall of his face. Neither stirs as Stan tiptoes past them, or as he takes the pillows he fetched from the break room and tucks them behind their heads.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments are appreciated as always! 
> 
> ~~now that stanuary and forduary are done, i'm going to _try_ and update SSD next but who knows~~


End file.
